Liberty's Last Stand

by Stephen Coonts

  Willis Coffee and Travis Clay had gone up the road to the main entrance of the airport and were settled in there behind trees, just in case.

  Except for the two on guard duty, we gathered around Grafton. “Okay,” he said. “The road to Dawson is open. I’ll take Yocke with me in the plane. The rest of you drive on up there. There is a roadblock about five miles from the southern entrance, but they know you’re coming and will let you through. Any questions?”

  “Yeah,” Jack Yocke said angrily. “Just what the hell is going on?”

  “We’re joining the revolutionary army,” Jake Grafton said calmly, as if that were as plain as the nose on his face.

  “Did you land there?”

  “No. I talked to them via radio. Tommy,” he said, “keep yours handy. Call me on one-twenty-two point nine if you have any trouble. I’ll be listening on that freq.”

  “But who’s there?” Yocke asked, his puzzlement evident.

  “We’ll find out when we get there.”

  He walked back to his plane with Yocke trailing along. The admiral climbed in, and in less than twenty seconds the prop began turning, a little cloud of black smoke puffed from the exhaust, then the prop spun up to a blur as the engine settled into a nice idle. He swung the tail of the bird with a little blast of power and began taxiing for takeoff.

  Sarah and I were sitting in the front seats of the truck, Dr. Proudfoot in the back, when the Cessna lifted off and turned northward.

  “Well,” Sarah said with a sigh, “let’s go to the war.”

  “You knew all about this, didn’t you?” I growled.

  She glanced at me and smiled. “He is Jake Grafton, Tommy. You, of all people, should have known that he’d be a mile ahead of Barry Soetoro on the best day Soetoro ever had.”

  I couldn’t think of a thing to say. We picked up Willis and Travis at the airport entrance and headed up the asphalt ribbon through the mountains for Camp Dawson.

  On the way I fiddled with the radio. Got a station with a seductive female on the mike who said her name was Dixie Cotton. She read the latest news releases from Washington, including one from the Pentagon that said they would no longer fight Americans, on whichever side of the political spectrum, and the ultimatum to Mexico. I wondered if that threat would frighten the Mexicans.

  I found myself rubbing my sore neck and, to take my mind off it, kept playing with the radio. I finally got a station that identified itself as being in Kingwood, West Virginia, which I knew was just a mile or two up the road from Camp Dawson. “Guess the folks up there have their power back,” I said brightly.

  Sarah just grunted.

  “Hey, electricity means commodes flush. Don’t knock it.”

  The announcer was telling people in the Kingwood area which stores were open, where they could buy food and fuel. The senior center was open, she said, and would feed anyone who was hungry.

  Maybe America was starting to get back to normal. I rubbed my sore neck some more.

  A reporter came crashing into the governor’s office in the parking garage under the Austin hotel with the Pentagon press release, which his newspaper had downloaded off the satellite. An aide took it into Jack Hays, who was in a meeting with bankers, college professors, and Dallas Federal Reserve officials. The subject of the meeting was the new Texas currency. As one of the Fed’s bankers, now working for the Republic of Texas, held forth on the value of money, Hays read the press release.

  Hays held up his hand, which silenced the moneymen. He read the press release aloud, all of it, including the ultimatum to Mexico.

  The bankers cheered. “We’ve won!”

  “If this is true,” Jack Hays muttered, too softly for anyone to hear.

  He sent an aide to find his cousin JR.

  The bankers were leaving when JR came in, so they all had to tell him the news and shake hands and congratulate him. “Best general since Sam Houston,” one of them told JR, who looked a little stunned.

  With the door closed, JR read the press release. “Is this true?” he asked Jack.

  “I don’t know,” Jack Hays said, shrugging. “But the implications are vast. Either Soetoro wants a political peace, or the U.S. armed forces have mutinied against him.”

  “Hadn’t we better find out which it is?”

  “We’ll find out soon enough. If Soetoro wants a settlement, we’ll be hearing from them. In the meantime, let’s stop all offensive military operations until we know more.”

  “What about that attack boat, Texas?” JR asked.

  “You know where she is, what she’s doing?”

  “Hell, no. Loren Snyder and a handful of volunteers took her to sea. Apparently they torpedoed two destroyers busy squirting off Tomahawks at our power plants, but there have been no more ships torpedoed nor has the U.S. Navy shot any more Tomahawks.”

  “Do we have any way to contact them?” Jack Hays asked.

  “I certainly don’t. I think all we can do is rely on Loren Snyder’s good sense and hope for the best.”

  “Could you call the Pentagon and talk about this?”

  “I can send them a message through the National Guard message system.”

  “If they try to locate and attack that submarine, your Mr. Snyder might well fight back.”

  “Might? Of course he will. But let’s not get our knickers in a twist. Loren can take care of himself. I’ll pass along a heads-up to the Pentagon, however.”

  President Hays leaned forward. “I’ve got another project for you too. Texas has roughly a billion dollars in gold on deposit in a vault in a New York bank, the Bank of Manhattan. I want you to make a withdrawal and bring that gold back to Texas. All the bankers say that backing the new Texas dollar with gold will give it instant credibility. That’s their prescription for the next few years. After that, they want the Texas dollar to float so the money supply isn’t linked to the price of gold, which is nothing but a commodity. We’ll see how that goes, but a gold standard does sound like a place to start.”

  “How much does a billion dollars’ worth of gold weigh?” JR asked.

  Jack Hays said, “The treasurer’s office said a pound or two less than forty tons. Actually, it’s probably worth a lot more than a billion dollars since Soetoro shut down the markets and gave investors worldwide the jitters. In the past, state government sort of ignored the gold. It’s like oil under the southeast forty or Grandma’s diamond ring—no one gave it a thought. They simply talk about a billion dollars’ worth of gold. However, it’s there and it’s ours, and now we need it.”

  JR whistled. “New York City,” he said thoughtfully. “Forty tons.”

  “Ingots, I guess,” Jack said. “I hope it isn’t in wafers in boxes or some such thing.” He grinned. “I’ve got a feeling that the sooner we get that gold to Texas, the better. If Soetoro knew we were coming for it, we wouldn’t get it without some kind of political settlement. And there isn’t going to be a political settlement between Texas and the United States with Barry Soetoro in the White House.”

  “I’ll need some kind of paper from the treasurer, and maybe a letter from you. You know how bankers are. They’ll want to paper their ass.”

  Jack Hays frowned. “They aren’t going to turn loose of that gold without Washington’s say-so even if you have a letter from Jesus. Take some guns.”

  “Oh, we will,” JR said with a disarming smile. “Rest assured, we won’t forget to pack those. But give me a letter from the treasurer and one from you.”

  Jack called in a secretary and dictated one. While she typed it, he called the treasurer and told him what was wanted. “He’ll send it over to the Guard this afternoon,” he told JR.

  When he left with Jack’s letter in hand, JR went to the Texas State Library and Archives building on Brazos Street. He asked to see the head librarian and told him what he wanted. Twenty minutes later he left with a copy of a letter from the White House in his hand, one congratulating some scout for achieving the rank of eagle. That kid’s paren
ts knew somebody, he thought.

  His next stop was a printer at the Texas Department of Public Safety. He asked to see the head printer, and after introducing himself, presented him with the copy of the White House letter to the Eagle Scout. “I need at least four sheets of a nice white bond with the president of the United States’ seal on it. Exactly like this, identical.”

  “Whoa. On whose say-so?”

  “Mine. Or we can get the president’s, or Colonel Tenney’s. Whom do you want?”

  “This isn’t going to be used for a forgery, is it?”

  “Perish the thought.”

  The man sighed and asked, “When do you want it?”

  “Well, I have to go see Colonel Tenney upstairs. That should take no more than an hour. I’ll pick it up when I finish.”

  “An absolute rush job will take about a week. Every office in government wants new stationery now that we’re a republic again. We have—”

  “One hour, or I go get Colonel Tenney and bring him here to talk to you.”

  The man frowned at the letter with distaste, as if JR had been using it for toilet paper, then at JR Hays. “You’re serious?”

  “As a heart attack.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “I told you. Major General Hays, commanding the Texas Guard.”

  “Never heard of you. When the Guard wants something, they always send a sergeant, a gal named Dooley.” He waved the letter. “But okay. One hour.” Then he wheeled and marched away from the counter.

  JR went upstairs to see Colonel Frank Tenney and explained the problem. “Maybe the vault will be open when we get there, but probably not. Maybe they’ll open it for me, but maybe not. More than likely I’ll have to help myself. I need some expert advice about how to get into a gold bullion vault.”

  “Forget it,” Tenney said. “It can’t be done. There is no way in the world to get into either of the big gold vaults in New York. Texas’ gold is in the Bank of Manhattan, which has a helluva vault. But the biggest gold repository on earth, bigger than Fort Knox or the Bank of England gold vaults, is under the New York Federal Reserve Bank. They have at least five thousand tons of gold there, and it’s guarded by a private army.”

  “Explosives?”

  “Two Mosler vaults were in banks in Hiroshima when we dropped the bomb there. The banks were obliterated, but the vaults were intact. In 1957 the air force set off a thirty-seven-kiloton bomb near a vault, and it remained intact. JR, you ain’t going in one of those things unless they let you in. And the chances of them doing that are essentially microscopic. Go back and tell your cousin Jack that it can’t be done.”

  “That’s probably good advice,” JR acknowledged. He said goodbye and went to the Texas Treasury Department, where he had a private interview with the treasurer of the Republic. The man was prematurely bald and wore a suit and tie even though the building wasn’t air-conditioned. All the juice from the emergency generator was being used to run lights and computers.

  They discussed Texas’ gold reserve, how many ounces and so forth.

  “So where is Texas’ gold?” JR Hays asked.

  “Bank of Manhattan.”

  “Have you ever visited the facility, looked at the gold?”

  “Oh yes. Impressive vault. The bank installed it when people started speculating in bullion ten or fifteen years ago. They didn’t want to store the stuff at home or in a suburban safe deposit box, so the bank got into the business of storing gold for a fee. Modern facility, great vault, as secure as any vault on earth. We put about half a billion dollars of the state’s funds into gold, and they stored it for us. Our gold has essentially doubled in value, so it’s worth about a billion, or was until the current political difficulty arose. Probably worth twice that now.”

  “Good investment.”

  The treasurer nodded and looked pleased.

  “What about the New York Federal Reserve’s vault?”

  “I got a tour once,” the bureaucrat acknowledged. “Didn’t get into the vault, of course, since they never let humans inside. The gold is moved on trolleys by remote control. Robots stack the ingots and load and offload the trolleys.”

  “I’ve heard they have a private army guarding the vault.”

  The treasurer nodded. “Yes, indeed. Most of what I know about the vault I picked up in casual conversation from the assistant treasurer, who used to work at the Bank of Manhattan. He wanted to get back to Texas so I hired him. Guy named Chuy Medina.”

  “May I talk to him?”

  “Sure. Great guy. You’ll like Chuy. I talked to the governor about the gold, but why are you interested in it?”

  “Oh, that gold has to come back to Texas someday. We thought we should ask some questions.”

  “Sure.”

  Chuy Medina was of medium height, about fifty years of age, from McAllen, Texas, and had spent fifteen years at the Bank of Manhattan. Left two years ago when he scored a job at the Texas treasurer’s office.

  “Tell me about the Bank of Manhattan,” JR prompted. “They have about forty tons of Texas gold, and I have been ordered to make a withdrawal.”

  Medina laughed. “That’s a joke, right?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “This is like some weird plot from Mission: Impossible. There ain’t no way, man. No way at all.”

  “Talk to me,” JR Hays said with a smile. “Convince me.”

  The FEMA concentration camp guard towers on the edge of Camp Dawson were empty when we rolled by and went between the guards at the main gate. Several of the guards were wearing old army shirts, but most were in jeans and Tshirts. They were armed to the teeth and looked to me like they knew precisely what they were doing. This might be amateur hour, but there was some military discipline and brains guiding the amateurs. There wasn’t a FEMA uniform in sight.

  The place was as crowded as a state fair, but without the animals. I estimated I could see over a thousand people, all adults, most in civilian clothes, all armed and doing army stuff, like working on weapons, loading trucks, and doing calisthenics. Cars were parked in rows, men wearing pistols directed us to a parking place, and a girl who looked as if she had ditched her classes in high school that afternoon escorted us toward the headquarters building, not the one in the concentration camp, but the main National Guard building. I could hear rifles popping, no doubt over at the shooting range. And a buzzing overhead. I looked up and saw a Predator drone taking off with a Hellfire under each wing.

  I glanced over my shoulder and got a good gander at Sal Molina’s face. The man was stunned. Almost stupefied. Obviously Grafton hadn’t been whispering to him, either. If he had been doing any whispering, I supposed it was to Sarah Houston, who looked as if she were trooping up to the director’s office to be given another twenty-hour-a-day assignment.

  Willie Varner was looking around wide-eyed. He had been clueless too. Willis and Travis were almost as surprised as the Wire.

  I confess, I was a bit pissed at Grafton. I would have bet the ranch that he wasn’t surprised, that he well knew what we would find here. Why hadn’t the spook bastard confided in me? Need-to-know and all that spy shit, I suppose.

  They confiscated all cell phones as we came through the front door, and put a sticky on each one with the owner’s name. Then they patted us down.

  We ended up in the back of a conference room standing against the wall, all of us, including Dr. Proudfoot. Grafton was sitting at a table right up front, and that Washington Post weenie Jack Yocke was sitting beside him as if he were number two in the chain of command. Three big bananas, all in their fifties, were standing in front of a map that covered a blackboard, I suppose, taking turns briefing Grafton. They had started a few minutes ago, and they didn’t bother starting over for us. Another dozen or so people, perhaps half of them women, all wearing pistols, were in the chairs behind Grafton and Yocke and in front of us. One was a congressman I recognized from television, Jerry Marquart.

  “So our plan is to have Fir
st Corps …” Yep, I thought, these are army dudes. “… proceed east on I-Sixty-Eight to Cumberland and Hagerstown. Second Corps will go east on U.S. Route Fifty to Winchester and then to Leesburg and into the District along that route. All this is subject to change if we hit opposition or find bridges have been blown. We’ll be close enough together on parallel routes that we can mass if necessary. Keep the drones up and looking, use our Special Forces veterans as scouts, and take whatever comes.”

  Grafton had a few questions, then asked to see the Pentagon’s press release again. He read it carefully, then laid it on the table in front of him and said, “This is too good to be true.”

  “It could be disinformation, deception,” the head dog agreed. “We don’t have their crypto codes, but from all the plain-language traffic we are hearing, perhaps there is some truth in it.”

  “What plain-language traffic?”

  “FEMA and Homeland. They are complaining bitterly that Soetoro has betrayed them.”

  “Even if we get into a firefight with that crowd, that doesn’t mean the Pentagon’s press release is inaccurate. It may only mean that the paramilitary boys are taking orders directly from the White House. If we see army troops, however, we’ll know this is a pretty little lie.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They chewed the rag about trucks, ammo, food, weapons, and all of that for another half hour, then I ducked out to find a restroom. There was toilet paper in there and the commode flushed. Life was looking up.

  When I got back, the conference had broken up, the rebel officers were leaving, and only our little crowd remained. Everyone had taken seats around the conference table so they could talk to Admiral Grafton, who looked at Willie and said, “Please escort Dr. Proudfoot to the hospital. They may need his services. Is that all right with you, Doctor?”

  It was, and the two of them left.

  Jack Yocke jumped right in before the door shut behind them. “This rebel enclave didn’t just happen, Grafton. Someone made it happen and you knew all about it.”

  “I made it happen,” Grafton said, looking around and taking in faces. “Sarah and I knew several months before Soetoro declared martial law that he was going to do it. We knew he was waiting for an incident that would justify martial law. The terrorists obliged. I have spent my adult life in the military and intelligence business. I talked to people I knew I could trust, told them Soetoro’s intentions, and asked for their help.”